Saturday, February 03, 2007

No-Kitchen Red Beans and Rice

Saturday, February 3, 2006My daughter Sarah lent me a crock pot, so I spent several hours searching the internet for crock pot recipes. To my dismay, I found that most of them call for several cans of cream of something soup or chicken bouillon granules or canned mushrooms. Sarah accused me of being a food snob, but I really am not. I like almost all kinds of food, including very simple food like fried chicken or meat loaf. I just like good food with real flavors and not too many added chemicals. I don't think that makes someone a food snob. I did manage to find some recipes that sounded pretty good. This is my first attempt.

Heat oil in crock pot. Crush garlic cloves into olive oil and cook for a few minutes. Chop the onion, leeks, red pepper, and potatoes, and add them, along with the baby carrots, to the pot. Stir everything together. Add the beans, broth, and seasonings, and stir. Cover and cook 6 to 8 hours on low heat. Serve over rice (made in electric rice cooker), and Cajun hot sauce (I used "Pain is Good" Louisiana style).This recipe yields a fairly soupy result; if you wanted it thicker you could use less broth or mash some of the beans into the broth before serving. It bears little or no resemblance to the traditional Cajun or Creole dish, but, on a day when the thermometer never got up to zero (Farenheit), it was very satisfying.

13 comments:

I just discovered your blog and am so impressed! I, too, am a lawyer (well, only 6 months now) and am currently clerking - but I hope to become a public defender when this is finished. And I love to bake bread. I just purchased the Bread Bible after reading your blog. Congratulations on baking it all!

In a large bowl, soak peas in about 6 cups cold water for 12 hours or up to 24 hours. Drain and rinse. Place in slow cookerAdd 6 cups water, ham bone/bacon, onion, celery, carrots, garlic, bay leaf and pepper. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours or until vegetables are tender. Discard bay leaf.

KneadtoBake,It is bread you see--two hard rolls from Rustica Bakery, just a few blocks from my house. If you're not going to be baking your own bread, you'd do well to buy it from Rustica, which also makes fabulous croissants and Danish. A friend also brought me a loaf of a nice hearty oatmeal bread to help me through my bread withdrawal.

Anonymous,Welcome to the bar, and, more importantly, to bread baking. I also started my career with a clerkship. It's a great way to begin--it's gratifying, in a perverse sort of way, to see that a lot of lawyers really aren't all that good; it helps you realize that you could be probably do at least as well as they're doing. I hope you get to be a PD. I love my job, and all the attorneys in my office are, as in Lake Wobegon, above average.

Doughadear,Thanks for the recipe! It sounds delicious. I just bougoht some organic vegetarian split pea soup, which was better in theory than in practice. I think that it really needs that ham bone or bacon.

Melinda,I do have an electric griddle, which I was planning to use a lot. As you guessed, I have no idea where it is.

Marissa,My temporary kitchen is in the laundry room of our basement--the original 1915 basement. I told Jim he could only take closeups in the basement so people wouldn't see the scary-looking "kitchen." I chopped the vegetables on a table that's too low for comfortable kitchen work. I got out my old Microwave Gourmet cookbook, which I'm going to try, and I figure I'll do a crockpot recipe once a week or so. A friend (who hates to cook) said that I should get a panini maker because I could eat them every night. I'm a little dubious about that.

P.S.When I make this soup on the stove top I add a smoke ham hock to it and when the meat has cooked for an hour I remove it from the pot, cut the meat off the bone in bite size pieces and return it to the soup. I can't see why it wouldn't work in a crock pot also. Really good on a cold winter day.

Pink Nest,I agree! And I know that you also have varied and diverse tastes in food.

Nancy,Thank you! I just ordered this cookbook tonight. A friend of mine told me that, for some reason, recipes for "slow cookers" are more likely to be tasty than are recipes for "crock pots." Apparently crock pots are cream-of-mushroomy, but slow cookers are organic and granola.

Hi - Just found your blog by way of the mention in the Minneapolis newspaper article on no knead. I had to chuckle about the add a "can of this or a can of that". I feel exactly the same way. Just looking at a can of undiluted cream of mushroom soup makes my appetite go away...My husband, a retired Lutheran pastor calls Cream of Mushroom Soup the "Lutheran Binder" - I have subscrbed and look forward to further posts and the completed kitchen.